What the U.S. People Really Want

1 Comment

Tags:

By
no measure can The Wall
Street Journal be mistaken for a liberal newspaper, so the
findings of its latest poll should greatly disturb Republicans.

A
poll released late last week, done in conjunction with NBC News,
found that most Americans support collective bargaining rights for
workers, want to end the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy andimpose a surtax on people making more than $1 million
annually, and believe economic growth is a higher priority for
government than deficit reduction.

Those
results probably don't sit well with John Kasich, Scott Walker or
John Boehner.

An
incredible 81 percent of respondents support imposing the surtax on
the wealthy, while 74 percent want to end the Bush tax cuts for people who make
more than $250,000 annually.

Also,
51 percent said government should do more, compared to 46 percent who
believe it should do less.

Fifty-six
percent said job creation and economic growth should be the
government's top priority, while 40 percent said it should be deficit
reduction. Reforming the health-care system ranked third, with 28
percent.

Similar
findings about collective bargaining have been found in recent polls
by Gallup, Bloomberg, and The New York Times/CBS News. It's not an
anomaly.

Overall,
just 31 percent said the nation was headed in the right direction,
compared to 60 percent who said it was on the wrong track and 6
percent who were unsure.

With
those figures in mind and less than three months in office, it would
appear that GOP elected officials at the state and federal levels
have significantly misread the mandate given to them by voters in
last November's midterm elections.

The
poll was based on nationwide telephone interviews of 1,000 adults,
including a sample of 200 adults who only use a cellular telephone.
It was conducted from Feb. 24-28, and has a margin of error of plus or minus
3.1 percentage points.